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16 votes
3 answers
996 views

Why did instruction sets since the late 1970s seemingly stop including an "execute" instruction?

Many mainframe instruction set architectures (ISAs) in the 1960s included an Execute instruction, which would treat data as an instruction. I haven't found an architecture designed after 1976 which ...
Stavros Macrakis's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
548 views

Did any core-memory computers have a read-and-erase instruction?

Magnetic core, the primary form of computer memory from the mid-fifties to the early seventies or thereabouts, had the slightly awkward property that reading it erased it, so every time the CPU ...
rwallace's user avatar
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